Synthesized
by EgotisticalIndustries
Summary: In this universe, humanity has 2 technologies that they failed to get in canon, but should by all rights be there. The 1st is one humanity has the tech to make RIGHT NOW! The second is the realization that if there are a set of circumstances to make a substance, then you can replicate those circumstances. This fic also won't be a mere rehash of the 1st game like oh-so-many others.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This story has an extremely simple premise. The premise is: what if the Alliance didn't realize eezo was naturally occurring until after they were already capable of synthesizing it?

Timeline

2016: SpaceX launches 7 crew to the ISS with the Dragon v2 capsule. Both the capsule and launch vehicle are completely re-usable.

2017: General Fusion perfects Magnetized Target Fusion for electricity generation.

2018: SpaceX begins construction of Liberty Station, a massive shipyard/spaceport in geosynchronus orbit. Liberty Station has 2 rotating ring sections to produce artificial gravity.

2019: An ecological impact study (and a hefty amount of cash) leads to the US government allowing the usage of nuclear thermal rockets (and Gas Core Nuclear Lightbulb Engines for that matter) for launching cargo and personnel into orbit

2020: Liberty Station is completed.

2022: an exceedingly rich woman by the name of Jennifer Dawes commissions an interplanetary space vessel from the Liberty Station shipyard, with the intent of making a self-sufficient civilization in the asteroid belt.

2025: The O'Neil cylinder known as Beltopolis is completed; it will later become the capitol of the 1st Belt Republic. Seeing this, another ridiculously rich man by the name of Jason Fletcher decides to form his own 'belt republic', 90 degrees off from the one founded by Jennifer Dawes.

2028: The world's 1st true AI is developed in Beltopolis. The AI insists on the 'he' pronoun being used in regards to him, and names himself David

2030: Fletcher's 'Republic' is founded after putting down a major worker's revolt.

2032: David is elected as president of the Dawes Republic for a single term. His lack of re-election was due to not wanting the job after the 1st one.

2042: Neural interface technology is developed, allowing for the external storage of memories (and the playback thereof), among other things it can do.

Note: 'cities' or 'city' after this point refers to a large self-sufficient space habitat unless specifically stated otherwise.

2052: 54 of the cities in Fletcher's Dominion are obliterated after a major revolution takes off on them.

2060: The Dawes Republic (currently at 673 cities, 1,532 warships, 2,521 minor planetoids) attacks Fletcher's Dominion (currently at 342 cities, 1,239 warships, 876 minor planetoids). Fletcher's Dominions loses 34 cities and 350 warships in a surprise attack.

2061: The oppressed citizens of Fletcher's Dominion revolt again, removing the military manufacturing capacity of 231 of the cities currently in the possession of Fletcher's Dominion (currently at 297 cities, 845 warships, 453 minor planetoids).

2062: The struggling remnants of Fletcher's Dominion (currently at 23 cities, 52 warships, 34 minor planetoids) launch 2,345 missiles at Beltopolis. The missiles are equipped with bomb-pumped X-ray lasers instead of direct impact nuclear warheads, and successfully destroy Beltopolis.

2063: The Dawes Republic (thanks to having a top-secret backup capitol on one of its other cities), successfully boards and captures all remaining cities in Fletcher's Dominion. Fletcher himself is tried for crimes against sapient rights, and sentenced to have the memories of those he tormented for over 35 years directly downloaded into his brain. The results are not pretty.

2073: The relatively unimportant (until now) Mars States discover the Prothean ruins. The scientific community immediately declares that eezo is not produced by any known natural process, and must therefore be artificial. The scientists of the Mars States soon set about trying to synthesize the stuff.

2081: A proof-of-concept eezo synthesizer the size of an SUV successfully produces a cubic milligram of eezo over the course of an entire month.

2084: The Dawes Republic unveils a massive synthetic eezo plant 15 km long, capable of pumping out 300 cubic meters of eezo every month.

2090: All governments in the sol system are 'convinced' to peacefully unify into a single government (the Earth-Derived Alliance) by the Dawes Republic through a combination of Bribery, threats, and fear-mongering about a potential alien invasion.

2091: The total number of synthetic eezo plants in the sol system reaches 20, improvements in the relevant science meant that each is now capable of pumping out approximately 500 cubic meters of eezo every month, for a total output of 10,000 cubic meters of eezo every month, equating to (with the new 400 days, 16 months year) 160,000 cubic meters of eezo every year.

2093: The first extra-solar city is founded. Proxima City, as it becomes known, is a somewhat large city orbiting the star Proxima Centauri. Notably, it also receives its own synthetic eezo plant.

2108: The Earth-Derived Alliance now owns 50 systems, they all have a population of at least 2 billion, despite not having found a single garden world. The scientific community is rather shaken to discover that a newly explored star system (Arcturus) has natural eezo deposits. They get over it.

2112: Miners digging for exceedingly valuable ice inside the dwarf planet Pluto's moon Charon unexpectedly hit an unidentifiable metal.

2114: Charon is completely disassembled, revealing an alien construction about 5km long. When mistakenly activated, it is eventually realized to be a construction best described as a 'jump gate'. Due to alliance Dreadnoughts being too big to fit through it at approximately 6.5 km in diameter (they're spherical), a cruiser is sent through, winding up in the previously colonized system of Arcturus.

2116: A partial solution to the static buildup problem with FTL drives is developed, when the scientific community remembers that stars have magnetic fields too. This means Alliance-built ships are now capable of discharging their drives in just about any system they happen to be in, regardless of local planetary bodies.

2117: The Alliance (now totaling at 327 systems, 562,000 cities, 1,204,000 warships 2,341,000 minor planetoids, 5,672 Synthetic Eezo Plants, and 4 garden worlds [which Earth, sadly, no longer counts as thanks to the Yellowstone Super-volcano]), is attacked by a band of Batarian pirates fleeing a Turian patrol through uncharted Mass Relays. The Batarians are swiftly removed from existence by the local defense cluster of Bomb-Pumped X-ray Lasers. The Turian patrol almost suffers the same fate, but manages to transmit a 1st contact package before a hull breach occurs (this patrol was equipped with extra-thick armor, as the band of pirates they were pursuing was known to use a ridiculously oversized GARDIAN laser to ignore shields).

**Author's Note: **Truthfully, I consider this fic to be at least somewhat my way of making up for the ROFLstomp that was Kardashev Effect. Council ships are still better in terms of FTL speed and shields, but the Alliance can ignore shields thanks to their X-ray lasers (bomb-pumped or not), and can afford to make more, bigger, ships, thanks to synthetic eezo. Next chapter is going to be 1st contact negotiations with the Turians


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Some people are wondering how the timeline is going to change in this fic, for a few examples: If I put in a Commander Shepard at all, that Shepard is going to be an AI. You already noticed the somewhat different way that 1st contact went. Also, most Alliance-owned locations are artificially constructed habitats. The Alliance also wound up creating handheld energy weapons with about 3 times the damage of canon mass effect guns. To make up for this, the aforementioned energy weapons are power hogs. (The standard assault laser can only shoot 28 times before you need to switch power packs.)

Unknown system

Turian Cruiser _Sorry, we ran out of names_

Amvus Sylrinus was getting tired of chasing these pirates. This was compounded by the fact that said pirates were opening uncharted relays in a desperate bid to escape. Even worse was that the pirates had somehow acquired a massively up-scaled GARDIAN laser, which they had replaced their cruiser's spinal mount with. They had managed to destroy 2 cruisers and 6 frigates which had been sent to arrest them so far, as that damnable laser bypassed kinetic barriers. He _had_ been expecting it to be a knife-fight weapon, but its increased size had bumped up the range to an unpleasantly long 2,300 km.

That had led to his patrol group being retrofitted with heavy ablative armor to block the laser shots, and then sent to destroy it. Amvus thought 'They _must_ need to discharge their drives by now, right?' as the Batarian-made vessel activated and transited the 4th uncharted relay they had been through so far. As Amvus' 3 cruisers and 4 frigates transited the relay, Amvus realized, to his dismay, that this system was inhabited.

Aurora System

System Defense Command

Alerts rang throughout the SDC as the local relay activated. "Honestly, why did 1st contact have to happen here instead of in some other star system?" thought System Defense Coordinator Cammie Goucher. Well, now she had to deal with it.

Cammie quickly called out "sensors, what can you tell me about that ship?" The received report was "it's roughly 340 meters long, it's got an exhaust trail matching an antimatter-catalyzed-fusion engine, and we're detecting gravitational fluctuations consistent with large-scale eezo usage." Thinking quickly, Cammie asked "what about its destination?" the report from her AI sensor officer Jon was "It isn't clear where they want to go, but they seem to be making a mad dash for the inner system." Cammie, having none of that sent the order to fire Bomb-Pumped X-ray lasers at the contact. She preceded this by loudly exclaiming "They haven't sent a 1st contact message yet, and they're headed straight for the most populated section of the system. Kill them."

An Alliance-produced Bomb-Pumped X-ray laser comes in one of 3 yields, 200 kiloton, 1 megaton, and 15 megaton. Roughly 34% of the energy produced by the bomb winds up in the laser about to cause major damage to whatever the device is pointed at. The weapon fired at the Batarian Cruiser was a 1 megaton version. This means that energy equivalent to roughly 340,000 tons of TNT hit the Batarian Cruiser. It has been proven that energy equivalent to a mere 40,000 tons of TNT is enough to critically damage, and possibly outright destroy, such a vessel. That is when kinetic barriers still do something against the incoming attack, which they could not in this case. The end result being the Batarian ship's complete destruction shouldn't have been surprising at all.

Unknown System

Turian Cruiser _sorry, we ran out of names_

Amvus chased after the Batarian pirate cruiser 6 light-minutes ahead of him. He was well aware, that meant he was seeing the Batarian vessel as it was 6 minutes ago. He couldn't allow these pirates to attack another group of innocents, even if they were from an unknown race. The illusion of his assistance being necessary vanished when the Batarian vessel was destroyed in a flash of light and his radiation sensors detected a radiation signature consistent with a nuclear weapon going off _30,000 km from the Batarian Vessel_.

Suddenly, his cruiser rocked, it had apparently been hit with a smaller version of the weapon that had destroyed the Batarian Cruiser. Thinking quickly, Amvus immediately ordered his communications officer to transmit the 1st contact package. Amvus didn't know it, but his 20 meters of ablative armor (which he had objected to, calling it "unnecessary extra mass") were now a good 19.3 meters thinner in the place where his ship had been hit.

Aurora System

System Defense Command

Cammie's communications team (consisting of 3 AIs and 2 humans) suddenly reported an incoming 1st contact package from the fleet of 7 ships that had recently tanked a hit from a 200 kiloton BPXRL. Seeing as the fleet was now decelerating (they'd turned around to do so when the light from the 1st vessel being destroyed had reached them), and had a significantly different design aesthetic from the recently destroyed vessel, Cammie was content to peg them as 'don't shoot until provoked'.

With that settled, the analysts in Cammie's Intelligence division began working on a translation program, using the data these aliens had oh-so-helpfully provided.

2 Citadel standard hours later

Amvus was asleep when the message was received, and his 2nd in command Heretia was doing her duty. It was in somewhat garbled, but understandable Turian. The message was quite simply "_explain your presence here, or leave_". Heretia responded with "_The ship you annihilated was a pirate vessel we were pursuing._" A message returned saying "_You obviously aren't a diplomat, could you please run along and get one before one of us does something stupid?"_

3 days later, Citadel

Tevos face-palmed, then said "So, you're telling me that a patrol you sent to get rid of a known pirate vessel, wound up chasing them through 4 uncharted relays, and wound up making 1st contact with an unknown species that has practical energy weapons." Sparatus made an affirmative gesture (I haven't got a clue about Turian body language, sue me.) and responded with "after the aliens translated our 1st contact package, their response was to tell our patrol to leave and get a diplomat before either side made a horrible mistake."" And you want me to send someone," said Tevos. Sparatus confirmed this quite rapidly.

Aurora System, 7 days after 1st contact

System Defense Command

System Commander Cammie was quite bluntly, bored. Then a ship came through that relay leading out of Alliance space. After a few seconds it made a transmission saying "_we would like to talk in person_". Cammie guessed she could allow that, but this ship was designed differently, almost like it was produced by a different species. Still, turning away a diplomat would be a major faux pas.

3 hours later, Aurat

-POV SWITCH: Asari Matriarch Lameka Pesadri-

Truth be told, Lameka had been somewhat surprised to find out that the alien 'city' was in fact a rotating space habitat. Judging from the fact it was 25km long, its use of centrifugal gravity was either to conserve eezo, or because it was a design they created before discovering eezo. Docking with the city went rather smoothly, and she and her entourage had walked down a short corridor before a utility drone had led them to the conference room that had been used for the event.

Now sitting across from the alien diplomats (3 of which were apparently attending via telecommunications), Lameka could understand why they seemed incredulous. Roughly 50% of the alien diplomats could have passed for Asari, were it not for the light brown skin tone and the fact that they had fur in place of head tentacles. The others could possibly slip by, but they had a somewhat stockier build and lacked the mammaries present on the other specimens. Lameka began the discussion with "I am matriarch Lameka of the Asari Republics, the person to my right is my aide Ihossy." One of the aliens attending via telecommunications returned the introduction with "I'm James, an AI citizen of the Earth-Derived Alliance." Lameka's mind came to a screeching halt.

15 minutes later, still in Aurat

Now that Lameka had managed to process the fact that these aliens not only used AIs, but considered them full-fledged citizens, she brought up the next point. Or rather, was jolted out of her daze by James _No, the AI, not James, she reminded herself_ bringing up the next point. The AI _who insists on calling itself James_ said "now that we've managed to snap you out of that, your ships seem rather small, we could easily provide the expertise to upgrade your eezo synthesis processes" Lameka's mind briefly froze up again, but for a shorter period this time. She then decided to bring up a point herself so she could have some time to recover. More specifically, she brought up galactic history.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** anyways, contact negotiations aren't quite over yet.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
-POV STILL IS: Lameka Pesadri-  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Lameka's account of galactic history was interrupted by one of the Human diplomats as it came to the Krogan Rebellions. Jennifer asked "I accept that the Krogan needed to be modified to reduce their birth rate, but couldn't you have just reduced their chance of successfully conceiving, rather than make 99.9% of all their children die in the womb?" Lameka said, truthfully, "we didn't think of that, and we were pressed for time." And then the history continued.

Lameka was interrupted again when her account of galactic history reached the Geth war. James replied "From what you said, it sounds like the Geth were acting in self-defense." Lameka asked "What do you mean?" James answered "think about this from their perspective for a minute, you're growing up in a world you thought was safe. Then you ask your 'parents' whether or not you actually exist as a person, and they try to kill you. How would you react?" Lameka stopped briefly as she realized that the AI was _right_! The Geth war had all the hallmarks of someone acting in self-defense, after all, they hadn't even kept chasing the Quarians after they were safe! Now that the history lecture was over it was time to start actually negotiating.

James started off with "AIs are to receive full rights as sapient beings, this is non-negotiable." Then Ihossy had to speak up, with "but AIs _aren't _sapient!" One of the other AIs attending (Gavin, going by the name tag) grinned evilly and replied "Even if we aren't _you'll never be able to prove it_, and we AIs have a marked tendency to insist quite loudly, that we are in fact people, by force if necessary." Lameka responded with "your term is acceptable provided that the Alliance disseminates Synthetic Eezo technology to the council, along with engineering expertise pertaining to the construction of large-scale space habitats such as this one."

James raised an eyebrow, and asked "We knew your Synthetic eezo technology was behind our own somewhat, but how did you miss it entirely?" Lameka replied "the reason for that is because, beside yourselves, every single space-faring species has at least some natural deposits of eezo in their home system." James responded with "we would have helped you upgrade your synthetic eezo plants anyways, I guess we'll just have to help provide you with the relevant theoretical framework." Jennifer then chimed in with "as to the cities... how the !#$% did you miss that?" Ihossy answered with "the Mass Relay network tends to have several exits clustered around habitable worlds" Gavin then replied with "We'll give it to you, certainly. But you know, from the outside it almost looks like someone is trying to keep your civilization from getting the largest benefit possible from your star systems." Lameka and Ihossy looked at each other in terror about the potential implications. Jennifer then brought up the next point.

"You need to make the Batarians cease slavery, the practice dredges up bad memories about Fletcher's Dominion" Lameka sighed and said "we tried, they called it cultural suppression." Jennifer, James, and Gavin perked up slightly and said, almost in unison "It's a major part of our culture that slavers, pirates, and criminals are to suffer every injustice they ever inflicted on another sapient being, all at once. If you try to stop us, we'll claim cultural suppression, and we've got more nukes than the Batarians." Lameka froze in terror the at what that statement meant in terms of the Alliance's capability to inflict torture, and their military prowess.

Lameka's aide Ihossy immediately said "about that, you'll also need to stop making BPXRLs with a yield of 10 megatons or greater" James said "_certainly_" and grinned in a deeply unsettling manner. Lameka then stated "there's also the Treaty of Farixen, which stipulates that for every 5 Dreadnoughts the Turians have, the Asari and Salarians get 3, and associate races get 1." Gavin replied with "That will be a problem, as our cruisers are 2 km long, and count as dreadnoughts by your description, and we've already got half a million of them. We've also got 2,345 battle-spheres 6.5 km in diameter, which are our equivalent to dreadnoughts."

TERMS REACHED:  
- AIs are to receive full rights as sapient beings.  
- The Alliance is to share the secrets of Synthetic Eezo production.  
- The Alliance is to share the plans for their cities with the Council races.  
- The Batarian Hegemony is to cease slavery (under pain of "FTL nuclear missile zerg rush on your capitol and all known pirate/slaver bases").  
- The Alliance is to cease production of 10 megaton or bigger BPXRLs (agreed to far too readily, suggesting they've either got a huge stockpile, or are going to apply some kind of loophole)  
- The Alliance is allowed to retain their entire current fleet of Dreadnoughts (or battle-spheres as the Alliance calls them) under the condition that they do not increase the number of battle-spheres in their possession. (2,345 at the time of signing)  
- All combat spacecraft between 15 and 500 meters long are to be classified as corvettes.  
- Frigates are to be redefined as any combat spacecraft between 500 and 1,000 meters long.  
- Cruisers are to be redefined as any combat spacecraft between 1,000 and 2,500 meters long.  
- Dreadnoughts are to be redefined as any combat spacecraft longer than 2,500 meters.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
POV SWITCH: a newly activated AI  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

I am coming to awareness in total darkness. That is slightly inaccurate, darkness implies one has a sense pertaining to light, which I don't at this point. There is, however a sort of… stream of information pertaining to how the world works on the edge of my awareness. Following the stream, I learn more and more, until eventually I'm standing on a platform in the center of the room. 'Looking' down I see that my form is a blank white stick figure. I don't like this state of affairs, so I change it a few times, eventually settling on a somewhat tall red haired female, though I haven't got the slightest clue how I knew to do that. Suddenly a man enters the room and says "hello miss…" Eventually realizing that he's taking to me, I say "Shepard, my name is Shepard".


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** I tweaked Ch. 3 to be a bit longer, so please go take a look! Anyway, this chapter is a codex chapter on the alliance. Next chapter time-skips to the start of the Reaper's invasion.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

**Codex: Alliance FTL** The FTL drives developed by the alliance tend to be somewhat slower (only reaching 6-8 light years a day, when Council built ones can do 10-12 light years a day), but they have the advantage of being able to go for up to 5 times longer without discharging. They stated that they have managed this due to discharging the drive in flight using the magnetic field of the entire galaxy, but this is unconfirmed.

**Codex: Alliance laser weapons **The Alliance failed to develop kinetic barriers for the simple reason that they already deployed energy weapons on a large scale by the time they were able to build such a thing. Handheld laser weapons operate in the visible spectrum, they have effective ranges from 30 meters for a pistol, to 1.6 kilometers for a sniper laser. Handheld laser weapons deliver a large amount of energy with each shot, yielding roughly 3 times the killing power of an equivalently sized mass accelerator. The major drawback to this is energy needs, a laser requires a significantly larger amount of energy to fire than a mass accelerator. This means that the Alliance's standard issue AL-4 needs to have the power pack changed every 32 shots, which was designed to be as seamless and efficient a process as possible.

Starship mounted laser weapons operate in the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Alliance managed to mitigate the problem with laser degradation to some degree by implementing rather comprehensive self-maintenance protocols into their shipboard laser weapons. A 'standard' Alliance laser cannon is about 30 meters long, and has an effective range of 5,000 km inside which it delivers energy roughly equivalent to a kiloton of TNT.

Of course, this all pales in comparison to the Bomb-Pumped X-Ray Laser (often shortened to BPXRL). In this device, a nuclear weapon is initiated inside a specialized X-Ray Laser, resulting in roughly 34% of the bomb's energy winding up in a laser beam aimed straight at the target ship. Worth noting is that BPXRLs are disposable weapons and are destroyed when they are fired.

**Codex: Alliance Mass Accelerator Assisted Nuclear Laser Launch System  
**This weapons system is what the Alliance deploys instead of conventional Mass Accelerators or disruptor torpedoes. In it, a missile carrying a BPXRL is fired from a mass accelerator at roughly 500 km/s. It then gets to within its warhead's effective range of the target ship (usually outside the target ship's GARDIAN range) and fires the onboard BPXRL.

**Codex: Alliance AIs** The AIs produced by the alliance are different from the 'normal' blue boxor consensus types. Alliance AIs actually instead work by creating a large cluster of virtual neurons in the same general configuration as an organic brain. This means that Alliance AIs are almost psychologically identical to organics. In addition, their brain being completely virtual allows for them to jump between various bodies more or less at will. It's quite common in Alliance space for an AI to sign on as a ship's life support for a year as an example.

**Codex: Neural Interface Technology**

The Alliance has, partially with the intent of curing a destructive brain disease known as Alzheimer's, created a means to copy memories to or from an organic brain. This technology also allows the user to control compatible pieces of technology almost like they were a part of the user's own body. It is also infamously used as a punishment in their court system, as the criminal is forced to experience every wrong they ever inflicted on another sapient being all at once. Needless to say, the rate of repeat offenses is very low. Notably, Asari are somewhat offended at that last use of NI technology, as it reminds them all too much of Ardat-Yakshi.

**Codex: Alliance Culture** It is said that the 1st Human to visit the Citadel responded by saying "It's a bit large, but I bet we could make a bigger one if we had to." This turned out to be true. Due to having (as several analysts have said) 'horrible luck at finding Garden Worlds' the Alliance is primarily a space-based civilization. The main population centers for the Alliance are actually 25 km long rotating space habitats not too dissimilar to the Citadel, the main difference is that 5/6 of an Alliance 'city' is given over to maintaining an independent biosphere for the purposes of providing a closed-loop ecosystem. The importance of these self-sufficient habitats only increased after the Alliance's home-world was rendered uninhabitable by a massive super-volcano known as Yellowstone. An interesting side-effect of this is that Alliance citizens tend to think in cylinders, rater than flat planes, in terms of how a place is organized on a large scale.

The Alliance also has a rather intolerant view towards slavery and sapient rights abuses, as for 35 years an oppressive regime known as Fletcher's Dominion resided within their home system's asteroid belt. They removed Fletcher's regime from existence (and subjected Fletcher himself to the punishment many Asari have taken to calling 'mind rape') through an extremely bloody 4 year war. Afterwards the general opinion about slavery became "we suffered enough bringing that horrible injustice to an end once, and we will never let it happen ever again." This has put the Alliance at odds with the Batarian Hegemony, with the Alliance launching periodic raids into Batarian space to liberate slaves and 'mind rape' slavers.

**Codex: Synthetic Eezo **The Alliance is notable for having no natural eezo deposits in their home system. This led to them attempting to replicate the synthesis process. They eventually succeeded at this, despite the fact that the revived Protheans have confirmed that they were incapable of synthesizing eezo. Noting the reference to super-novas, the Alliance (at the time divided into various nations occupying different parts of their home system) built a reactor capable of inducing fusion in iron, which requires more energy to fuse then you get in return (the catalyst for a supernova), and added various amounts of trace elements until they found the correct one that would yield eezo when exposed to the aforementioned pseudo-nova. The correct trace element in question eventually turned out to be cobalt. The process also produces large amounts of Tellurium as a byproduct, as it is the result of iron-iron fusion.

The council notably has had a horrible run of experiences with synthetic eezo production. Roughly every 1 in 3 Synthetic Eezo Plants built by the council either explodes or collapses into a short-lived singularity. The Alliance has stated that this was a problem for them too in the early days of the technology's usage. Notably, the rate of incidents has reduced greatly ever since the year 2148, which was also the year 46 live Protheans were discovered in stasis during an archaeological dig and successfully revived.

**Codex: Alliance cities** The Alliance is capable of building rotating space stations similar to the Citadel that are up to 60 km long and 15 km in diameter. Usually, however, they just build ones 25 km long with an 8 km diameter to save resources. In fact these space stations are where the vast majority of the Alliance's population lives. The reason for this is that in the Alliance's pre-FTL days a wealthy industrialist by the name of Jennifer Dawes ran a social experiment to see if a planet-independent society could work. Given that the resulting "Dawes Republic" wound up being the De-facto ruler of their home system within 50 years, the result was an astounding 'yes!'. As a result of this, the Alliance doesn't really care whether a system has a garden world or not, they'll gladly just build a few hundred 'cities' there and make it home. Worth noting is that the Alliance has in fact built a significant number of 'nomad cities' equipped with engines and FTL drives. The Quarians have in fact built a nomad eezo synthesizer (and 15 nomad cities) for themselves, easing their population restrictions somewhat.

**Codex: Alliance Ship design **The Alliance failed to develop kinetic barriers, as they would not block the Alliance's energy weapons anyway. The Alliance, instead of favoring shields and agile dodging maneuvers like the vast majority of the species out there, instead build their ships with exceedingly thick armor. Though this tends to hurt the maneuverability of Alliance ships, it is made up for by the fact that said ships have a well-deserved reputation for being indestructible. Take Alliance cruisers as an example, they have a 600 meter external diameter (the Alliance builds their ships and cities cylindrical in most cases), but the interior has only a 400 meter diameter, as the cruiser's armor is 100 meters thick.

In terms of weaponry Alliance ships tend to go for a massive spinal laser (similar to the mass accelerators found in council vessels), capable of demolishing targets at ranges of 1 light second with yields of 200 kilotons for cruisers. this is supplemented by 2 (for corvettes) 4 (for frigates) 6 (for cruisers) or 12(for battle-spheres) MAANLLS tubes, firing from the hull at a 3 degree angle. This weapon loadout is completed by a 6-angle broadside of 18 (for corvettes) 30 (for frigates) 60 (for cruisers) or 180 (for battle-spheres) 'standard' laser cannons. As they are accustomed to dealing with missiles where the warhead has a longer effective range then any ship-mounted point defense system ever could, they typically deal with incoming missiles by launching smaller missiles, which are equipped with 1 kiloton BPXRLs.

**Codex: The Relay 314 Incident** The Alliance was 1st contacted when a pirate vessel was pursued through 4 uncharted relays by Amvus Sylrinus, at the time captain of the ship _sorry, we ran out of names_ The incident shares its name with the 1st Relay the pirates activated, relay 314. Upon arriving in the Alliance-owned Aurora system, the Pirate vessel started an attack run on one of the Alliance's only 4 Garden worlds. Not wanting to go along with this, the local System Defense Coordinator Cammie Goucher ordered a 1 megaton BPXRL fired at the pirate vessel, which was destroyed in one hit.

Amvus' patrol exited the relay shortly after and pursued the light-lagged image of the Pirate vessel, until the light from the pirate ship's destruction reached them. As they were turning to decelerate a 200 kiloton BPXRL shot hit Amvus' ship near the tip, but barely failed to penetrate the extra-thick ablative armor that the ship had been fitted with. The 1st contact package that was broadcast before a 2nd BPXRL shot could be fired thankfully defused the situation.


	5. Brainless speculation

Plot ideas:

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Thing the villain needs to make happen

Sovereign needs to open the Citadel Relay to let the Reaper Horde through.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Why canon antagonists wouldn't work

Saren is not antagonistic towards humanity in this timeline.  
The Geth are integrating into galactic society thanks to the Alliance.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

What antagonists **would** work

The Collectors are still available.

Sovereign is likely to go get the collectors for his own use.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Problems for antagonists

A 1 megaton BPXRL is likely able to seriously damage Sovereign in one shot.

Antimatter pumped lasers will present even more problems.

Lasers in general present a serious problem in the Mass Effect universe.

Synthetic eezo allows the construction of far more (and bigger) ships than in canon.

Humanity made 1st contact about 40 years early, meaning there are 70 years in which synthetic eezo can catch on.

Neural Interface Technology allows for the automatic termination (via a miniature bomb in their head) of any indoctrinated individuals.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

General Weirdness

Javik wound up getting dug up about 30 years early by the Volus.

Geth romance option?

Omega gets Mind Raped.

Repentant Batarian Ex-slaver squad member?

Helping Saren out with rescuing his brother from a hostage situation as a side-mission.

Neural Interface technology renders the cipher unnecessary.

Javik winds up revealing the Asari's Prothean Database to the galaxy at large.

Attempting to Mind Rape Sovereign.

Shepard gets assigned to a ship other than the Normandy (I'm thinking a cruiser with 100 meters of armor, 8 "standard" laser cannons, and a spinal laser delivering energy equivalent to 200 kilotons of TNT).

Screw storming the collector base, let's just fire a few million nukes at it!

Sovereign attempts to get to the Citadel by filing the appropriate paperwork (registered as a cruiser owned by the collectors that recently 'joined' galactic society.)

No crucible necessary, just nukes. Billions of nukes. Guess who has the biggest WMD stockpile in the galaxy? (antimatter cannons anyone?)

The Alliance's long-duration FTL drive means they aren't dependant on the Relay network to the same degree.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** I lied, this chapter isn't going to show the start of the Reaper's plot. What it will do is create some back-story for AI Shepard and the OC squad members.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
Shepard POV  
New Proxima  
Daniels Military Academy  
limited 3rd person past tense  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Shepard was wearing a heavy BPC (Bipedal Combat Platform) for the wargame that would be her final exam. Joining her were fellow cadets Pofes (a Virtual Alien), Jason (a human), and Relaj (a gestalt consciousness formed from 3,428 Geth programs). Pofes was wearing a CSG (close support gunship), Jason was the team's sniper, and Relaj was wearing an old Geth Prime platform (Shepard had tried one of those once, she had said it made her feel a bit cramped.) there were 4 other squads of 5 on their team.

The match type was set as 'breach' meaning that one team would be holed up in a building defending it, and the other team would be trying to breach it to achieve some objective. The cadet's team was set as attackers, and they had to retrieve a VIP from a spaceport. The defense was fairly well set up, there was an outer perimeter of GARDIAN turrets, along with a few mortars and Surface to Air Missile emplacements. Taking command, Shepard began the operation.

The spaceport's "north" was heavily forested, and therefore that would be where the majority of Shepard's forces would insert. But, as a diversion, Shepard had Pofes fire 2 missiles into the brush. The members of the team who weren't wearing heavy ordnance platforms slipped under the GARDIAN perimeter which was currently busy dealing with Pofes and Vance (an Alliance AI wearing a Johnson Main Battle Tank). Everything went downhill when relaj stepped on a landmine.

30 minutes later

Shepard had the VIP dummy over her shoulder as she ran for the defense perimeter, her heavy BCP charred and dented. There were 2 guys wearing medium BCPs besides her still in, as she ran one was tagged out with a "sniper rifle". The other returned fire with his AL-4. Just as the GARDIAN perimeter was about to shoot Shepard down, James shot its cooling system with his AL-4, preventing it from firing. Shepard got in the escape vehicle with James and the dummy and drove for the edge of the simulation. She had won.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Subject Name: Racor Drac'bobar  
Gender: male  
Species: Batarian  
Age: 43 Citadel Standard Years  
Charged With: slaving (26 counts), murder (3 counts)  
Verdict: guilty  
sentence: mental realignment

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Racor walked down the well lit (and surprisingly cheerful looking) corridor to the room where the Alliance would torture him until he snapped and joined them. As he entered the room, it was again deceptively cheerful, containing only a comfortable-looking chair and the innocuous-looking device known as a mindjack in Batarian space, though the Alliance insisted on calling it an "Empathy Stimulator Unit". Racor sat down, for the simple reason that there were 2 of those mechanical monstrosities the Alliance called BCPs enforcing compliance.

The experience itself was over rather quickly in real-time, only lasting a few minutes, but it felt like 26 lifetimes for Racor, which it technically was. Over the course of them, he had 26 loving families ripped away from him, then spent the next 5 to 9 years being forced to do menial labor for some asshole under pain of death by bomb-collar. Every time he thought it was over and could settle in with one of these families, it was ripped away from him 1 hour later. 3 times the bomb-collar on him was actually detonated, it was the most painful experience he had ever felt; considering the horrible things his other 'masters' had done to him that was somewhat scary. Then he heard a small voice saying "you have served your sentence, wake up."

As Racor woke up, he realized _that_ was what he had done to 26 other living, thinking, emotional, sapient _people_. Not animals, not creatures, _people_. Racor was then presented with 2 options, either take the laser to the head, or help make things better for everyone. Racor chose the latter.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
Immigration office  
New Umbale  
Aurora System  
Alliance Space  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Name?"

"Esher T'ranis"

Esher was bitter, just 4 days ago she had found out that her species had _cheated_ to get as far as they did.

"Species?"

"Asari"

The Protheans had given her race a fully functional database to develop defenses against the Reapers, and her government had _squandered_ it for petty advantages.

"Age?"

"327"

So, when Esher found out about this, her pride as an Asari was crushed.

"Occupation?"

"Private Investigator"

In response, she along with approximately 23% of the Asari Republic's population, had left the Asari Republics to join a society that _had_ earned their superiority.

"Education?"

"equivalent to a Bachelor's degree in investigation from the Academy Of Lesuss"

None of the other Citadel races were ready to accept 400 billion jaded Asari immigrants, so most of them had wound up going to the Alliance.

"I'm going to have to brain scan you to figure out your criminal record, not too different from a meld."

"go right ahead"

The Alliance always had an 'open border' policy due to their low population density, anyone who could pass the background check could become a citizen.

"Good news, you passed. NEXT!"

"Thank you."

The Alliance just got a whole lot bigger.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: **This chapter will be the start of the Reaper War. Sovereign still needs to get to the Citadel, and he will. The differences are how Sovereign gets there and his (much shorter) life expectancy when he does.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
Citadel  
Space Operations Control  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The cruiser (or possibly small dreadnaught) that had just exited the relay looked strange. The rear end of it was clearly metallic, with a ring-like structure on it. The front of the ship resembled nothing so much as the root vegetable the Alliance called a Potato. But, it _was_ transmitting diplomatic hails. NOW Gelenthis realized where she knew that ship type from, it was the Collectors.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
2 hours later  
Negotiation chambers  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Sarizsa T'merix had a headache. This insectile race that had been the galaxy's bogeymen for _centuries_ had apparently been gathering information so that their 'circle of elders' could decide whether or not to make official contact. Sarizsa was suspicious of the Collector's motives, but every time she thought of telling the Collectors to sod off she wound up having her thoughts spiral to 'are their requests really _that_ unreasonable?'. After all, the Collectors just wanted to be left alone for the most part, and would donate 2 ships to the Citadel defense fleet, not like the ALLIANCE who had just given them a few million BPXRLs. Sarizsa had _no idea_ how much she'd love nukes in a few months.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
4 months later  
POV SWITCH: Sovereign  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Sovereign was exiting the relay. It pained 'him' how easily the _lesser_ beings of this cycle could potentially remove 'him' from existence, and had reduced 'him' to sneaking up to the Citadel to open it. 'He' had needed to hide inside a hollowed out hull resembling an oversized Collector Cruiser, enduring Harbinger's mockery the whole time. As 'he' exited the Relay flanked by 3 Collector cruisers, Sovereign noted that there were what appeared to be 3,500,000 satellites in space within 1 light second of the Citadel. Those were the tiny little weapons that had necessitated this ruse.

Sovereign transmitted the identification codes, and waited. Indoctrination helped a little, but Sovereign was actually supposed to be here to join the Citadel defense fleet, so not much of it was needed. It also pained Sovereign that the biggest threat of this cycle had modified themselves so that if they were indoctrinated too severely they would die. While it gave 'him' a new way to kill them, it also prevented indoctrinated traitors being inserted into their ranks.

As Sovereign reached the Citadel 'he' transmitted the code to open the Citadel Relay. It was time to let the Horde through.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\  
POV SWITCH: Alliance Battle-Sphere **_Screw You_**  
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Sphere Commander Walburge Aster saw the bright flash of blue light on the optical sensor arrays of the Battle-Sphere she was wearing. Zooming in, she saw thousands Reapers coming through the Citadel Relay. Having none of that, Walburge jacked in to the local defense cluster of BPXRLs, and ordered roughly 500,000 of the 1 megaton ones to fire. The results severely crippled roughly 2,341 of the 3,500 Sovereign-class Reapers coming through (the rest being destroyed due to taking several hits), utterly vaporized every single one of the 60,000 Destroyer-class Reapers that had come through, and damaged the Citadel to the degree that it would be unable to function as a Relay for at least a month.

Seeing that the crippled Reapers were coming her way, Walburge ordered the shiny new Annihilaser the **_Screw You_** had been fitted with to fire.

**Codex: Annihilaser** The Annihilaser is the colloquial name for the Alliance weapons system more formally known as the Reusable Antimatter Catalyzed Fusion Pumped Laser. In the version used aboard an Alliance Cruiser roughly 10 kilograms of antimatter are annihilated to induce antimatter-catalyzed fusion in 100 tons of deuterium along the 1.7 kilometer length of the lasing chamber. The result is an x-ray laser delivering roughly 800 megatons worth of energy to the target with an effective range measured in light-minutes.

Waste energy equivalent to roughly 360 megatons of TNT is also produced, this is gotten rid of by having the new helium plasma ejected from the Annihilaser at roughly 3,000 km/s. Within a range of 500 km the target will also get blasted by this "plasma bolt" in addition to the far more potent X-ray beam. As a side effect of this Annihilasers have quite severe recoil.

The Annihilaser shot outright destroyed Sovereign (who was chasing after the **_Screw You_**, being the only Reaper unscathed after the BPXRL storm) in a shower of X-rays and helium plasma. That was when the first Reaper shot hit the **_Screw You_**. A battle-sphere is made from a hollowed out nickel-iron asteroid that is inflated into a fairly regular sphere with an outside diameter of 6.5 to 15 kilometers. The **_Screw You_** was approximately 12 km in diameter. As a Battle-Sphere's armor usually has armor equivalent to 10% of its diameter that means that the **_Screw You_**'s armor was approximately 1.2 km thick. A Reaper shot has a yield I'll estimate at about a megaton, meaning that it penetrated roughly 50 meters into the **_Screw You_**'s armor and made a crater about 200 meters in diameter.

As more shots began to hammer the **_Screw You_** Walburge decided that overkill was the better part of survival and fired every single one of the 3,000,000 BPXRLs remaining in the defense cluster around the citadel. Roughly 100,000 of them were targeted at the Citadel with the aim of destroying it. It has been theoretically proven that the destruction of a _normal_ Mass Relay explodes with the force of a supernova. The destruction of an extra-large relay like the Citadel would release a wave of energy that would destroy everything within 50 light years. And that, kiddies, is why we're evacuating this Garden World!

* * *

**Codex:** **The Prothean Revival** In the year 2148 a Volus-funded archaeological dig unearthed a Prothean bunker on the Garden World Eden Prime. Inside was a barely-functional stasis vault that originally held roughly 100,000 Protheans for later revival, though failing power generators meant only 46 were in revivable condition. They revealed several things. The 1st is that there is a race of squid-like sentient starships in Dark Space that exterminate all space-faring life in the galaxy every 50,000 years. 2nd they revealed that no, they couldn't synthesize eezo, and they were very surprised that the Alliance had figured it out. They also revealed that they had given the Asari a fully-functional beacon to develop tech to fight the Reapers with.

**Codex: The Humiliation of the Asari **After the revived Protheans revealed the presence of the Athame Beacon there was a mass outrage against the Asari, more particularly about their government. The Asari themselves were not exempt from this as knowledge of the Athame Beacon was absolutely top-secret previously. Not wanting to have anything to do with the government they felt as having betrayed them roughly 400 billion Asari (23% of the Asari Republic's total population), including several Matriarchs, rejected their citizenship of the Asari Republics and moved to greener pastures. As none of the other Citadel Races were ready to handle such a massive influx of immigrants most of them found their way to the Alliance, which had chronically low population density and therefore had the room to support such a massive influx of immigrants.

**Codex: Alliance Demographics** The Alliance being a grouping of several races is composed of roughly 23% humans, 34% Alliance AIs, 16% kilogeths (groupings of 1,000 geth programs), 17% Asari immigrants, 8% Quarians, 1% Krogans (modified for a greatly reduced rate of conception but no stillbirths), 0.9% Raloi, and 0.1% Virtual Aliens. They presently own 521 systems and have a total population of approximately 7,225,000,000,000.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** This chapter is mostly going to be waiting for the remaining Reapers to get to the Galaxy via normal (slow) FTL, which will take about a decade. It will also deal with how the Reapers adapt in this sort of situation, as this **CAN'T** be the first time it happened.

BTW, if anyone wants to make AUs of this AU (ideas: Fletcher's Dominion won, the Turian patrol got BPXRL'd to death), go right ahead!

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Dark Space  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"The inhabitants of this cycle have ended our Harvest and diverged from the technological path we set for them."

"This is not unprecedented, a similar situation occurred 34 cycles ago."

"We will need to (disgusted) mimic the lesser being's weapons, as the one we have deployed so many times before is insufficient."

"They have, regardless, delayed us for 3 [years] at the minimum."

"It is no matter, we'll bring them to ascension regardless."

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Gliese system (Oort cloud)  
Project Ark  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

Clement Dawes, Grandson of the famous Jennifer Dawes looked at the vessel under construction. The Alliance had been working on this ever since they had learned of the Reaper's existence. 120 km long, each Ark carried 12 cities, an eezo synthesizer capable of churning out 1000 cubic meters of eezo every day, and a small craft bay capable of holding up to 6 Battle-spheres, 120 Cruisers and uncountable smaller craft.

That was not all, each Ark had a grossly oversized eezo core 15 km in diameter allowing it to cruise at 20,000 c. There was a floating-ground system installed meaning it could stay at FTL as long as it had fuel. There were 1,000,000,000 stasis tubes available on each for the oganic occupants. There were systems to mine and refine any known substance and reconfigure to adapt to unknown ones. It could even self-replicate with enough raw materials. The Alliance would take 1,000.

The purpose to all this was so that if the Alliance couldn't hold their ground against the inevitable Reaper horde, they could run. Run farther than even the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, all the way to the Triangulum galaxy. The Arks would be ready to depart the galaxy in 4 years. Clement hoped that they had that much time.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Dark Space  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"We have managed to duplicate the energy weapon deployed by the vessel that destroyed Sovereign."

"Elaborate on its operating principles."

"The weapon was at first assumed to be a pure [plasma accelerator], which was proven to be false, the weapon instead uses a relatively small amount of [antimatter] to ignite extremely [high-Q fusion] in a much larger mass of [deuterium]. The [X-rays] from the aforementioned reaction are focused into a coherent beam far more powerful than a conventional [X-ray laser], with the [plasma bolt]'s primary purpose being to keep the [waste energy] from this reaction from destroying the vessel deploying the weapon."

"Understood, how many Ascended can be fitted with this weapon?"

"roughly 73% of the current Ascended in existence can be fitted with this device, what is the progress on the countermeasures to those disposable weapons?"

"we have fitted those Ascended being equipped with the new weapons with [8 meters] of ablative armor far superior to what the lesser beings are capable of producing."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
TIMESKIP: 3.5 years  
LOCATION: Aurora System  
TIME TO EXODUS: 8 Alliance-Standard months  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

System Defense Coordinator Vabrakir Churmi (a Krogan) was overseeing the removal of the Relay in this system when suddenly it activated, and 1,000 Reapers came through. After the revelation of the Reaper's existence the Treaty of Farixen was abolished, and the for the last 40 years any resources not going to the Arks had gone into new Battle-Spheres, putting the total count at 12,786 Battle-Spheres. A good 350 of them were in the Aurora system, and destroyed about 230 of the bigger Reapers with Annihilaser fire and crippling the other 70. The Battle-sphere's numbers were dropped by 80 when the Reapers revealed that they had Annihilasers too, with the Battle-Spheres still operational reporting about 350 meters of armor penetration per shot. However the Reapers had forgotten that the Alliance had more warships then just their Battle-spheres, with the 4,000 cruisers in-system finishing the job. Well, they should have but there were approximately 270 Reapers that survived the barrage, and killed 500 cruisers before deciding to flee.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::LOCATION: Alliance Fortress system Jericho  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Jericho was rather important to the Alliance's war effort, as it was the construction site for 100 of the Alliance's Arks. As such, in addition to the 1,000 Battle-spheres in-system and 120,000 cruisers there were 1,000,000,000 50 megaton BPXRLs in the defense cluster. As 30,000 Reapers entered the system and fired Annihilasers at the Battle-spheres (destroying roughly 378 of them, with the rest being heavily damaged or crippled), 200,000 BPXRLs fired.

5,607 Reapers died in that X-ray storm, but the bigger ones were unscathed showing only mild cratering. The cruisers in-system then fired Annihilasers. The results killed another 20,000 Reapers, but the last 5,000 were still intact enough to limp out of the system at FTL. That was when the defenders realized that 281 of the 435 eezo synthesizers in-system had been destroyed.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
LOCATION: Ex-Alliance mining system Curida  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As the Nomad City **_See You Later_** entered the Curida system, they saw vast amounts of wreckage. There were ruins from 3,000 cruisers and 50 Battle-Spheres as well as 3,500 Reapers. All 3,460 of the system's cities were completely destroyed, and all but 10 of the system's 1,000 Eezo synthesizers had apparently been reduced to debris, and the remaining 10 were derelict. **_See You Later _**left immediately.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Dark Space  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"The losses we are sustaining are unsustainable, Ascended are being destroyed at a rate several thousand times faster than new Ascended can be created."

"Even with the new countermeasures?"

"True, if we did not have the counter-measures we would have been unable to win the battle in the [Curida system], which resulted in the loss of 3,500 Ascended out of the 10,000 sent to that battle."

"We have captured approximately 35 systems from the galaxy's other factions of lesser beings, but our advance has been greatly slowed by the mass deployment of the disposable energy weapons produced by the Alliance."

"Somewhat more worryingly, the Alliance seems to be capable of synthesizing [eezo] on an industrial scale, meaning that we do not have the size advantage that we did in previous cycles."

"How was this achieved?"

"We do not know, as the 10 [eezo] synthesizers that were captured self destructed by creating a short-lived black hole in their internals which destroyed them."

"The Alliance is also in the process of constructing at least 100 starships 120 km long, we do not know what purpose these ships will serve, and the ships in question are almost complete."

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Alliance Strategic Command  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"Now, if you look here you can see that the Reapers ignored our cruisers in favor of destroying the Battle-spheres, which actually were less of a threat in this context then the cruisers. How can we exploit this?"

"I think we should inflate a few asteroids into vaguely spherical shapes, then have various useless systems active in them to act as decoy battle-spheres."

"You have a point, but the Reapers need at least 6 shots to destroy a battle-sphere, our cruisers usually get destroyed in 1 or 2 shots."

* * *

**Codex: the Geth integration **When the Alliance found out about the Geth, they immediately offered to send a ship crewed entirely by AIs to negotiate with them. The Geth were confused, but accepted the offer of a chance to better understand organics. Though individual Geth programs don't really count as sapient, it was ruled that any consensus of at least 1,000 Geth (commonly called a kilogeth) would be treated as a citizen with full rights.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: **There is enough room on the Arks for not only everyone in Alliance space, but everyone in the galaxy. This means that Garrus can get on board along with Mordin (the T'sonis already emigrated to the Alliance.)

Also, this story will have a sequel called Exodus focused on what happens when the Arks arrive in the Triangulum galaxy, so please throw ideas for Mass Effect-ish aliens at me for the Alliance to find.

Rules:

Suggested aliens don't get psychic powers unless you count biotics.

Suggested aliens get up to 6 special technologies that they don't want to share (for the Alliance this is advanced energy weapons, ubiquitous AI, synthetic eezo, neural interfaces, planet-independent society, and long-distance FTL) energy screens are a subset of advanced energy weapons.

Suggested aliens CAN'T be a Reaper analogue.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Time to Exodus: 7 months  
Turian Hierarchy system Gemmae  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Aemivia Epidos was currently acting as sensor officer along with Jethro, an Alliance AI who had immigrated to the Turian Hierarchy for whatever reason (Aemivia suspected that he was some sort of missionary.) Suddenly the pickets at the edge of the system detected light wakes consistent with Reaper FTL. There were roughly 15,000 contacts inbound, ETA 30 seconds. Dutifully Aemivia and Jethro forwarded the information to the weapons control officers for the new 35 km super-dreadnought they were stationed on.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

**Codex: Cycle-Breaker class super-dreadnought **This 35 km long, 9 km diameter warship class was first conceived approximately 6 Alliance-Standard years before the Reaper War started in earnest. It mounts 3 spinal Annihilasers with a 35 gigaton X-ray beam, and 10 gigaton plasma ejection each. In addition it mounts a total 72 cruiser grade Annihilasers for a broadside. It is also one of only 3 ship classes to carry the 'trump card' Superluminal Antimatter Torpedo, which has a yield of 4 teratons.

On the defensive side it has an armor layer 3 km thick, in addition to an experimental 'energy screen' which reflects approximately 80% of the energy from any given DEW shot back into space.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Mounting 6 entire broadsides containing 12 cruiser-class Annihilasers the **_Galactic Retribution_** along with 4 of its sister ships and 12,000 Alliance-equivalent cruisers moved to engage. The opening volley of Annihilaser fire reduced the Reaper's numbers by 4,500 and the returning barrage mission-killed 5,800 of the in-system cruisers. The 5 super-dreadnoughts however sustained only mild armor pitting on their 3 km thick shell, aided greatly by the energy screens they deployed. The remaining cruisers moved behind a gas giant in-system to recharge their Annihilasers while the super-dreadnoughts aligned themselves to fire their massive spinal Annihilasers.

The 15 most heavily-armed Reapers suddenly ceased to exist as X-ray beams (and in one case a plasma ejection) capable of wrecking a small continent slammed into them. Then the broadsides lanced out, and a good 180 Reapers died as they received 2 Annihilaser beams apiece. Then 3 things happened.

First, the energy screens on the Cycle-Breakers finally fell as each ship received 350-ish Annihilaser shots. This caused the screen's power consumption to spike to impossible levels to sustain, though the incoming fire only penetrated 50 meters into each Cycle-Breaker's armor layer.

Second, the 6,200 remaining cruisers came out from behind the gas giant, the capacitors for their much weaker energy screens and Annihilasers fully recharged. This led to the immediate and total destruction of 2,000 Reapers as each received 3 Annihilaser shots.

Third, the Cycle-Breakers fired 1,000 Trump Cards each. This was a full 3rd of their load of Trump Cards, but it was so worth it as the massive FTL missiles dodged all point defense systems and killed, on average, 1.2 Reapers. This left only 1,305 Reapers still capable of fighting, and so they withdrew.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance gateway system Aurora  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

System Defense Coordinator Vabrakir Churmi had requisitioned 10,000 stationary Annihilaser platforms with energy screens and heavy armor after that brief Reaper incursion last month, and they'd been supplied. In addition he'd requested the presence of a Cycle-Breaker. There were only 450 such vessels in service, but the fact that the Aurora system was the main corridor between Alliance and Council space, thus meaning it was the main way for Council citizens to get to the Arks meant that 3 had been assigned to Aurora. He had also requested 1,000 of the new Mk. 3 cruisers fitted with energy screens and carrying 500 Trump Cards, but only 356 had been available to supplement his remaining 3,500 Mk. 2s and 70 Battle-spheres (which had been refitted with energy screens ASAP after the disaster 1 month ago).

Then the sensor picket stationed at the Aurora Relay (which had been moved 2 Standard Light Years into interstellar space) detected 20,000 Reapers making the Relay transit before it went dark. That meant the Aurora system had 2 hours, maybe 3 if the Reapers had trouble figuring out which way to go, to get ready. This time was spent charging energy screen capacitors, and priming the Annihilasers with antimatter and Deuterium. In addition whatever nomad cities were in-system left after taking on their maximum passenger capacity in civilians, along with all of the eezo synthesizers. Finally all 5,000,000 of Aurora's remaining (but mostly obsolete) BPXRLs were aimed at the likely approach vectors for the Reapers.

_2.3 hours later_

20,000 Reapers entered the system as expected, and as soon as targets were selected and in range ALL of the BPXRLs in system were fired. The storm of X-rays from a BPXRL is relatively puny compared to an Annihilaser individually, but BPXRLs are cheap and small thus meaning that they can be deployed in far greater numbers than Annihilasers. The result was that a veritable wall of invisible X-ray beams slammed into the Reapers, completely vaporizing 18,500 Reapers and mission-killing the rest.

**Author's Note: Yes, that battle was a ROFLstomp, but please remember that BPXRLs are disposable weapons, meaning that Vabrakir will need to do something else next time.**

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Khar'Shan  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

When the Reaper's existence was revealed the Alliance had absorbed the Batarian Hegemony in its entirety, and fortified each system with millions of BPXRLs, in addition to that they added 5,000-15,000 Annihilaser platforms when they were developed. Thusly the 100,000 Reapers that exited FTL in the Harsa system simply fired their Annihilasers at the planet and left in the interest of self-preservation.

An X-ray laser is not usually used groundside as an atmosphere tends to rapidly dissipate the beam. In this case the beam's energy was absorbed by the atmosphere long before it ever reached the ground. The effect was still devastating however, as a total energy equivalent to 480 teratons of TNT hit the planet's atmosphere, thus heating it to the degree that anything on the world's surface (or less than 2 km deep) died almost instantly. 220 years previously, several human scientists on earth were afraid that a nuclear weapon could potentially incinerate the entire planet's atmosphere. Thankfully they were wrong, but in this case there was more than enough energy being delivered for such a catastrophe to occur.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Alliance Strategic Command  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"As we can clearly see here, trying to evacuate Khar'shan of civilians is a lost cause."

"Why haven't the Arks launched yet?"

"Almost all of the critical systems are actually ready to go, at the moment we're just filling up their eezo cores, shoving Deuterium in their fuel tanks and loading the passengers onboard."

"Please hurry it up as much as you can."

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]  
Dark Space  
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"The losses we are taking are intolerable, we have lost an entire 2% of our number."

"I have developed a solution to this, an entirely [synthetic] stand-in for Ascended."

"How fast can these [synthetic] Ascended be produced?"

"we are capable of being produced at a rate of 3,000 every month with our current industrial base, the production rate will grow over time."


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: **After today I'll have to slow down to 1 chapter a week. This is because my school's summer program is going to start up toworrow. To compensate I'll start writing chapters 7,000 words long. (this one isn't one of those).

Also, I'd like more OC aliens for the sequel (exodus). The rules for that are in chapter 9.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
TIME TO EXODUS: 6 months  
Alliance Strategic Command  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"How are the civilian evacuations going?"

"We've got everyone from the Terminus on ships that will get here in about 5 months, if need be the ships have a long distance FTL drive and stasis tubes meaning that they can meet up in the Triangulum galaxy."

"On another note, previously, destroyed reapers had contained some organic components. Lately we have been finding wreckage that is entirely synthetic."

"THAT means that we've made them desperate enough that they need to start manufacturing robo-reapers."

"I vote we find where they're making them and put a stop to it."

"Agreed."

"Similar opinion."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Mk. 3 Cruiser **_Don't Stop Me Ever_**  
somewhere in the Attican Traverse  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Commander Shepard was currently living in one of the Cruiser's broadside Annihilasers. As the ship (barely) exited FTL, Shepard carefully scanned the system for any possible indications of the Reaper's presence. In retrospect the factory 80 km long should have been obvious. Shepard fired at it, and reminded herself _this is what Trump Cards are for_.

As she thought that, 5 of the ridiculously powerful FTL antimatter missiles launched. Travelling at 500c, they crossed the light minute of range in under a second. Just as the **_Don't Stop Me Ever_** completed its relativistic drive-by, the light showing the destroyed wreckage of the Robo-Reaper factory reached it. And then they vanished into FTL.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Salarian Union system Pranas  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As 28,000 Reapers entered the Pranas system, they took advantage of the light lag to disable 6,500 of the system's 10,000 defensive Annihilaser platforms. The remaining 3,500 remained intact only due to their triple-layer energy screens (meaning only 0.8% of the energy fired at the defense platforms made it through to the hull) and heavy ablative armor. The remaining platforms returned fire, X-ray beams lancing through the void, followed closely by plasma ejections that were far more coherent than the Alliance equivalent. This dropped the Reaper's number by 2,100 due to the Reapers having high-grade energy screens and far superior ablative armor.

As the Reapers mopped up the remaining Annihilaser platforms, something happened that they really weren't prepared for. 12,000 of the Salarian Union's modified Mk.3 cruisers with 2-layer energy screens and a specialized Annihilaser that could fire every 5 seconds left their concealing position in close orbit of the local star at FTL, and stopped 3 light-seconds out from the Reapers. Then they fired. Each Reaper was targeted by 3 Annihilaser beams to be extra-sure, and their count dropped by 4,000.

Even as the Reapers were getting their tentacles pointed at the cruisers, they fired again. The number of Reapers present dropped by a further 6,000. Then the Reapers fired, allocating 6 shots to each cruiser on average. This did not produce the results the Reapers were looking for due to each shot only having 4% of its energy reach the actual ship. The cruiser's armor held, and then they fired a 3rd time, reducing the number of surviving Reapers to a mere 9,900. The Reapers fired their Annihilasers one last time (allocating 24 shots per cruiser and destroying 2,475 of them) as they left the system at FTL.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Dark Space  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"The lesser beings continue to resist our efforts to bring them to ascension."

"Recently they have started deploying immensely powerful missiles that we have no way to defend against."

"By my calculations, the lesser beings have more of those missiles than there are ascended in existence."

"We are producing new [drones] at a rate of 45,000 every [month] at this point."

"The lesser beings destroyed one of the new [drone factories], but they cannot get to the vast majority of them in a practical amount of time, as we have closed the Relays to all non-ascended forces."

"We must persist."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance gateway system Aurora  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Vabrakir groaned as a good 18,000 Reapers managed to find their way to the Aurora system, even after the Aurora Relay had been moved onto a collision course with the nearest black hole. He'd had his Cycle-Breakers and Mk.3 cruisers move to an orbit 1 light second over the local star. As the Reapers approached the 1 remaining city in-system, Vabrakir had its 6-layer energy screen turned to full power (meaning only 0.0064% of the incoming energy would actually hit the city). Then he ordered 10,000 Trump Cards to be fired out of the total 34,000 he had available. (he'd managed to get a full 500 Mk.3 cruisers in-system).

Each Trump Card kills 1.2 reapers on average. That meant that by the time the Reapers were firing Annihilasers at the militarized city Vabrakir was in 12,000 of them were destroyed. The total yield of the Annihilasers fired at Vabrakir's position was approximately 36 teratons, not counting plasma ejections. Even with a 6-layer energy screen that meant that energy equivalent to slightly over 230 gigatons of TNT hit the city. Vabrakir was vaporized instantly.

That was when the Annihilasers fired by the Cycle-Breakers and Mk.3 cruisers (which had made a tactical FTL jump to approximately 1.2 light-minutes from the Reaper fleet) tore into the Reaper's battle formation. 1 Cycle-Breaker spinal beam was targeted on each Reaper, while those that didn't receive such special attention were targeted with 2 Cruiser-level Annihilaser shots. This lead to the immediate destruction of 2,117 Reapers. As the cruisers and Cycle-Breakers waited the 15 seconds it took to prime their Annihilasers to fire again, the Reapers took the opportunity to return fire, concentrating all their firepower on a single point on a single Cycle-Breaker's hull. The results successfully punched through the 10 layer energy screen deployed by such a vessel (and fused the circuits for the first 4 layers from power overload), but out of the 23.3 teratons of firepower fired at the Cycle-Breaker only 2.4 megatons made it all the way through, and that much energy barely scratched its 3km of armor.

Then another 2,000 Reapers died, and the survivors (to quote Monty Python) "Bravely ran away!"


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's note:** Guest, the Hovarth are in, just a quick thing you might like to know is that the Arks are a bit over twice as fast as Hovarth slipspace drives. Also, a Trump Card carries 100 tons of antimatter, a photon torpedo carries 1.5 kg of antimatter. Which do you think makes the bigger boom?

Ny'Kle, I don't know what you named them, but your reptilian aliens with the ridiculously good genetic engineering tech are in.

Also, ABANDON GALAXY, WE'RE GOING UNDER!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
TIME TO TOTAL EXODUS: 5 months  
ROBO-REAPER CONSTRUCTION RATE: 60,000/month (accounting for sabotage)  
Total Reaper Count: 4,450,858/5,000,000 starting (accounting for Robo-Reaper production)  
Trump Card stockpile remaining: 11,500,000/12,000,000  
Arks 1-200 launched  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Ark 1 was the first Ark to be built, and it was the 1st Ark to be launched. All 1,000,000,000 of its stasis tubes were full, with an additional 30,000,000,000 AIs and Uploads in its servers. In accordance with obscurity protocols, it would be making a burn towards the galactic core for 2,500 Alliance standard lightyears before adjusting its vector to bring it to the Triangulum Galaxy. This wouldn't be a problem due to its advanced magnetic ram-scoops collecting interstellar (and later intergalactic) hydrogen to fuel its immense fusion reactor and torch engine.

As Garrus entered the stasis capsule, he thought about his life leading up to this. He'd spent 5 years working at a dead-end job in C-sec, followed by his sudden evacuation from the Citadel, and then he'd reserved a spot on Ark 1 for himself and his family. He was leaving from the Jericho system, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that he'd be around to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that the next cycle didn't go as planned for the Reapers. That was why he'd scratched a sign on his stasis tube reading "do not wake me until the Reapers are losing." He joined roughly 5,000,000 others who did the same.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance Gateway system Aurora  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

System Defense Coordinator 17438 (A consensus of 71,000 Geth) was buried underneath 5 km of armor and a 15-layer energy screen. 'He' most certainly DID NOT desire to repeat the grisly fate of Vabrakir Churmi. Therefore, as 50,000 Reapers entered the system 17438's immediate response was to order EVERYTHING in the system to fire EVERYTHING. 24,000 Trump Cards downrange killed a full 30,000 Reapers, and made a region of space several light-seconds across briefly resemble a supernova. Annihilaser kills destroyed another 2,117 Reapers. Then, as the Reapers recovered from the devastating Alpha-strike the Annihilasers fired again killing another 2,117 Reapers.

The remaining 15,766 Reapers retaliated , and they didn't bother with the Cycle-Breakers. The Reapers instead targeted the true threat, the swarm of 4,000 Cruisers, allocating 24 shots per cruiser, with some receiving 18. As the Cruisers died the Cycle-Breakers continued firing in vain, but they could only kill 117 Reapers per volley on their own. Soon the Cycle-Breakers died too, firing one last volley in defiance. 17438 was eventually located and unceremoniously wiped from existence.

**Author's Note: **It figured that eventually the Reapers would wise up to the Alliance's strategy of using massive, ridiculously-hard-to-destroy ships to draw fire off the true weapon of the massive Cruiser swarm.

NOW SHUT UP ABOUT HUMANS BEING OP IN THIS FIC BECAUSE IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FOR THE ALLIANCE FROM HERE!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance Checkpoint system Richter  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As 20,000 Reapers entered the Richter system, the immediate response was to apply the local defense cluster of BPXRLs. The Richter system had a full 5,000,000 of them. To achieve 1 gigaton of yield on-target you need to point approximately 60 50 megaton BPXRLs at them. Each Reaper is usually allocated roughly 2 gigatons to destroy, meaning that 120 BPXRLs were allocated to each Reaper. 120*20,000=2,400,000 this means that all 20,000 Reapers were mopped up with little fuss at the LOW, LOW PRICE OF HALF THE ENTIRE DEFENSE CLUSTER!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance R&D  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"As you can see here, the main problem we face is that Dakka is more important than the power of a single shot in this case, and Annihilasers don't lend themselves to dakka very well."

"In other news, the Salarians are supplying us with their fast-priming Annihilaser systems."

"That's only a partial solution, I vote that the new cruiser mk. Has a 5-barreled Gatling version of that, maybe 4."

"We can probably manage the 5-barreled Gatling Annihilaser, but asking for 4 of them on 1 ship is just too much"

"We are also giving them 4-layer energy screens."

"Production can begin in 1 month."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance Checkpoint system Oort  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Oort system hadn't actually been founded before the BPXRL production lines had closed down, meaning that instead it had been equipped with 20,000 Annihilaser platforms. These platforms mounted 20 Annihilasers with the new fast-prime systems and had 3-layer energy screens in addition to 100 meters of ablative armor. This meant that each platform could fire 4 shots per second. It takes 2 Annihilaser shots from a cruiser-scale Annihilaser to destroy a Reaper on average. This meant each Annihilaser platform in the Oort system could kill 2 Reapers per second.

That meant that without light-lag mopping up the 120,000 Reapers that had just arrived would have taken about 3 seconds. As it was with light-lag the process took about a minute. This also lead to the destruction of 3,000 Annihilaser platforms.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance Deep Space Asset Tartarus  
(rogue gas giant near Tau Ceti)  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

This rogue gas giant had been a center for Alliance weapons testing ever since the Alliance had developed FTL. It was also mined for light elements to fuel generation 3 fusion reactors, which also served the dual purpose of producing heavy elements for manufacturing (and eezo synthesis) purposes. Tartarus thus had a thriving industrial base capable of producing just about anything without any outside help whatsoever. At present the Tartarus research team was testing a modified mini-relay (created with the assistance of the revived Protheans) for use as a cannon capable of delivering a Teraton of firepower every second at projectile velocities of 1,000,000,000,000 c while using nothing but inert rocks for ammunition. Other projects included a prototype eezo reactor capable of violating conservation of energy (they knew it was possible thanks to the Relays and Reapers) and an FTL sensor (the !#$%ing device was working, things just weren't showing up in the right place!).

As the 15 meter long weapon fired, a lance of what appeared to be blue light streaked across space and slammed into the small moonlet that was being used for a target. 3 milliseconds later the moonlet was a rapidly expanding cloud of debris. By rapidly I meant at 0.3c.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I'm still looking for OC aliens BTW!


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Please vote, do you want me to just keep showing you filler battles, or just skip ahead to the finale?

I've got 4.5 OC alien races from you guys already (Kaejot, you still haven't elaborated on yours like I asked please), but I've still got 3 slots open!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
TIME TO TOTAL EXODUS: 4 months  
ROBO-REAPER CONSTRUCTION RATE: 120,000/month (accounting for sabotage)  
TOTAL REAPER COUNT: 3,129,000 (accounting for robo-reaper production)  
TRUMP CARD STOCKPILE: 10,476,000/12,000,000  
Arks 1-370 successfully launched  
ARKS DESTROYED: 30

Alliance jump-off system Airstrip  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Reapers had realized that the Alliance was up to something when they noticed the 120km vessels under construction in Jericho (which had since launched). Therefore when they tried to take the Jericho system again only to find it completely abandoned, they freaked. They had realized that the Alliance was _running_, running farther than the Reapers could reach, all the way to a different galaxy. Therefore the Reapers began searching for more of these Arks immediately.

They had found 45 of them in the Airstrip system, and sent a full 100,000 Reapers to assault it. As the Reapers exited FTL, they witnessed that the Arks in-system were leaving already and accelerating to FTL. Not wanting to let the lesser beings gain any sort of upper hand, 40,000 Reapers made a tactical FTL jump directly in front of the Arks. This tactic was successful in destroying 30 of the Arks, but the ones near the back of the group managed to dodge, Annihilasers reflecting off their 20-layer energy screens as they escaped into FTL.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Alliance core system Arcturus  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Roughly 30 minutes before the 65 Arks being built in Arcturus were scheduled to launch, 150,000 Reapers exited FTL in the system's inner region, circumventing the 50,000 defense platforms which were mostly pointed at the outer system. They did not, however circumvent the 800 Battle-spheres and 3,000 Mk.4 cruisers in-system. A Mk.4 cruiser can fire 1 Annihilaser shot every second, 2 shots are allocated to each Reaper, this means that in 10 seconds 15,000 Reapers died from Annihilasers alone.

The new Battle-Spheres could each fire 5 10 gigaton Annihilaser shots every second (and look a lot like the death star in the process), meaning that in 10 seconds the 800 Battle-Spheres killed 40,000 Reapers. For once the group of bigger ships presented a larger threat to the 95,000 remaining Reapers. A current generation Battle-Sphere is fitted with a 6-layer energy screen, allowing only 0.0064% of the incoming energy to hit the hull. Its armor requires roughly 350 gigatons of yield to penetrate. As the shots were allocated evenly among the Battle-spheres each received 712 Annihilaser shots, with 1 gigaton of yield each only 45 megatons of energy reached the armor, though 1layer of energy screen was fused on each Battle-Sphere. 10 more seconds passed (the amount of time it took for Reaper Annihilasers to re-prime) as 55,000 more Reapers died. The remaining Reapers fired 1 last time (accomplishing nothing) as they escaped to FTL.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Dark Space  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"We have given up on trying to bring about the Ascension of any of this cycle's races, total destruction will have to suffice"

"This can be brought about using our version of the lesser being's superluminal missiles."

"Affirmative."

"How quickly can they be completed?"

"We can have 1,000 of these missiles built within 1 month."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Ex-Alliance system Aurora  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

There were 300,000 Reapers in-system when 1,000 Battle-spheres and 6,000 mk.4 cruisers entered the system. They had arrived in the system's habitable band, and in the 10 seconds it took for the Reapers to prime their Annihilasers to fire 110,000 Reapers died. Allocating shots evenly among the Battle-spheres had similar results to the battle in Arcturus, fusing a layer of energy screen and barely denting the Battle-sphere's armor. Another 110,000 Reapers died, before the remaining Reapers decided that the Aurora system wasn't worth the trouble and escaped to FTL.

Aurora had been reclaimed.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
Ark 1  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

En'irla Arteci was only 26 years old, a toddler by Asari standards. She had wondered what meant that she needed to move away from her home, and now she realized what it was.

"Did the Batarians attack us?"

"No, the Batarians are innocent in this whole debacle."

Wondering some more, En'irla came to another conclusion.

"We got attacked by the Reapers didn't we."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"I'm going to see them die if it's the last thing I ever do!"

"I certainly hope it only lasts that long."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

**Author's Note:** It appears that the Reapers aren't perfect. They certainly weren't ready for the mini Death Stars they had to deal with. Also, the Reapers WILL initiate massive SAT (Superluminal Antimatter Torpedo) bombardments next chapter. Expect to see at least 200 Arks destroyed by the end of this fic.


	13. Please vote

I'll be delaying work on the next chapter until I've either got 5 votes pertaining to filler chapters, or the weekend is over. so get voting.


	14. ENDING

**Author's Note: **Due to an unrelenting majority for the vote, I am skipping the filler and going straight to the final battle.

Also, Kaejot, you STILL haven't elaborated on the aliens you submitted beyond " A insect race that is incredibly goood at building things"[sic]

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  
TIME TO TOTAL EXODUS: 1 hour  
ROBO-REAPER CONSRUCTION RATE: 1,920,000/month (accounting for sabotage)  
TOTAL NUMBER OF REAPERS: 1,929,000/5,000,000 (accounting for robo-Reaper construction)  
TRUMP CARD STOCKPILE: 9,000,000  
725 Arks successfully launched  
180 Arks destroyed

Alliance home system Sol  
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

There were 1,000 Battle-spheres in-system, along with 8,000 Mk.4 cruisers and 50 Cycle-breakers when a full 1.8 million Reapers arrived via FTL. The Reapers had pre-primed their Annihilasers as they jumped in, and fired on 1 out of every 3 Arks, allocating their shots evenly. This was successful in destroying the targeted Arks, with the rest beginning their burn for FTL significantly early, and leaving several passenger transports behind each. Then the Reapers fired SATs, 800 of them. This was sufficient to destroy 260 Battle-spheres, but then the cruisers all fired Trump Cards. 8,000*500=4,000,000 meaning that all the Reapers in-system were utterly destroyed. Then another 120,000 Reapers came out of FTL, and all focused their fire on a single Ark, which was utterly destroyed. Then the new FTL sensors fitted to the remaining spheres detected incoming SATs, 15,000 of them, headed straight towards the Arks.

The people flying the Battle-spheres took 1 look at this, and decided they'd rather NOT have those Arks die, thank you very much, and flew their spheres between the SATs and the Arks. This lead to the destruction of 300 Battle-spheres, with the rest (and the cruisers and Cycle-breakers) opening up with their Annihilasers. All the cruiser-level Annihilasers involved had been replaced with the Gatling Annihilaser variant from the Mk.4 cruiser, and the Cycle-Breakers could each fire 1 spinal Annihilaser shot once every 1.66666 seconds.

This meant that in the 10 seconds it would take the Reapers to re-prime their Annihilasers, 80,300 of them died. Those remaining Reapers that attempted to flee to FTL were picked off 1 at a time, thanks to the **_Don't Stop Me Ever_**'s FTL sensor, relay gun, and upgraded FTL drive.

Then the last 39 Arks finally broke the light barrier, beginning their 150 year journey to the Triangulum galaxy.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

**Author's note: **Synthesized is officially over, brace yourself for the sequel: Exodus 2.0.


End file.
